Outside the Box: Stephanie Merritt Cheers the Female Comedians Daring to Stand Up and Be Counted

Merritt, Stephanie, New Statesman (1996)

There are three staple newspaper features that appear with comforting certainty at the start of every Edinburgh Festival: "Why the Fringe has got too commercial", "Why the Perrier matters/doesn't matter", and "Why aren't there more women in comedy?".

This last lament has to be qualified by the observation that there are, in fact, plenty of high-profile female comedians (Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Caroline Aherne, Sally Phillips and Victoria Wood spring immediately to mind), but those who have achieved a degree of professional success have done so largely through comic acting and

its subsidiaries--character comedy, sketch shows, cabaret. Straight stand-up remains such a male-dominated profession that, in the 23 years of the Perrier Award, only one solo …

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Publication information: Article title: Outside the Box: Stephanie Merritt Cheers the Female Comedians Daring to Stand Up and Be Counted. Contributors: Merritt, Stephanie - Author. Magazine title: New Statesman (1996). Volume: 132. Issue: 4652 Publication date: August 25, 2003. Page number: 27+. © Not available. COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group.

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